Tokyo, Japan – As the Fall 2023 season draws to a close, anime enthusiasts eagerly anticipate the unveiling of the best and worst episodes according to the polls conducted by ANN readers. These rankings, based on the ratings given to individual episodes from the current season, provide a unique insight into viewer preferences. It is important to note that only titles legally streaming in North America are featured, ensuring that the rankings represent popular and watchable series.
The final week of December 24-30 commemorates the conclusion of the Fall 2023 season. To provide a comprehensive analysis, ANN has included an additional “final” week where all the last episodes compete against each other in terms of rankings. This comparison allows us to identify the series that concluded on a high note, as well as those that concluded more weakly. The “final ep.” column in the rankings represents a repeat of the last episode from either December 17-23 or December 24-30, while the “prev week change” indicates the difference in position between the “final ep.” column and the penultimate episode.
To further delve into the rankings, a graph offers a visual representation of the episodes’ fluctuating positions from week to week. While some series remain consistent in their rankings, others experience drastic shifts depending on the strength of each episode. In cases where a series has no episode for a certain week, the previous week’s episode is used as a placeholder. It is worth mentioning that the first episode of each series is considered part of the first week, even if it was streamed during the second week. Readers can click on the numbers to highlight a specific series.
The cumulative ranking for Fall 2023 takes into account the scores given to previous weeks’ episodes. In this ranking, the votes for the last episode of each series are counted twice, intentionally boosting series that ended on a high note. This compensates for the fact that the first episode of each series garners more votes, favoring series that began strongly.
In conclusion, these rankings provide an average of opinions from ANN readers and should be viewed as a source of entertainment and information. The Schulze method is employed to calculate the rankings, considering unrated titles as abstentions rather than inferior to rated titles. Thus, the rankings reflect relative quality rather than absolute quality. It is important to remember that the difference between the top-ranked and bottom-ranked shows may be minimal, and a lower ranking does not necessarily indicate a bad show. Long-running series and sequels also have advantages in the rankings, but low-quality filler arcs may bring down the season’s rankings.